A mess of pottage

Empire Resorts, owner of Sullivan County’s Racino in Monticello, recently sold an equity interest of almost 50 percent to a Malaysian company in an effort to bail itself out of financial troubles that threaten to sink it. With the Department of the Interior reviewing its stand on off-reservation gambling, the prospect of having large sections of local land put in trust for Native American tribes that wish to set up gambling facilities has been revived (and along with it, the prospects of increases in traffic-related pollution, crime and soaring infrastructure costs). And many locals are considering giving extensive rights over their land to gas drilling companies—all headquartered out of area, and some, like Norway’s StatOilHydro, which now owns a major stake in Marcellus acreage via Chesapeake Appalachia, that are located out of the country.

This seems like a good time to stop, take a deep breath and ask whether the residents of Sullivan, Wayne and Pike counties are in the process of giving away the store.

The point here is not that “furriners” can’t be trusted. We would ask the same question if it were a matter of Fiji Islanders who tried to get through an economic rough spot by selling off their land, or control of it, to companies from Sullivan, Wayne and Pike counties. The point is not that we’re bad, but that the wellbeing of Fiji Islanders would not be a primary concern in how we managed our investment; our primary interest would be in the returns we could make on it—and take out of the Fiji Islands. Exactly the same thing goes for out-of-area corporations or tribes who take over our land.

The situation becomes all the more poignant when viewed in the context of some maps recently produced by the National Park Service. (Unfortunately, the maps do not reproduce well in newspaper print, but you may view them online at www.na.fs.fed.us/watershed/fwp_preview.shtm.)

Map one shows the Northeast United States color-coded to show those areas that have the greatest capacity to produce pure water. Only a tiny percentage receives the highest rating of 10, mostly pushed up against the Canadian border in Maine, northern New York and Northern Michigan. Level nine is just as rare, and also largely restricted to the extreme north, where healthy forest—the single most important factor in the production of pure water—is concentrated.

Our area is an exception. Right in the middle of the highly developed tri-state area is a dark-blue, level-nine splotch that represents parts of Sullivan and Pike as well as of Delaware and Ulster counties; and right next to it, in Wayne County and the balance of Sullivan, is an area rated eight. The extent to which we are literally an oasis is hammered home by the second map, which combines the size of the population a water-producing area can serve. Adding that to the purity of our water, our area is rated a 10.

The final map is a depiction of our current tragedy—or challenge, if we can stand up to it. It combines the first two factors with a third one: the degree to which an area is under threat from development. There are only two small areas in the entire Northeast that combine the highest levels of pure water, population served and development threat on the map to rate a 10: one is a band stretching through Connecticut and eastern Vermont and into lower Maine. The other spreads through Sullivan, Pike and Wayne counties.

Water, as Fortune magazine recently declared, is the oil of the 21st century. We are spectacularly rich in this resource. And by selling off our land, or control of it, to those who would deforest and/or pollute it, we are squandering and possibly destroying our long-term wealth for a short-term economic gain—while companies residing elsewhere take home the majority of the short-term loot.

The Bible tells the story of Esau, who came home from a day in the fields so desperately hungry that he sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of lentil stew—or as the adage has it, “a mess of pottage.” His short-term hunger was satisfied—and his inheritance was lost.

Few among us are well off enough to be free from financial fear. Signing leases, or welcoming even a destructive industry like gambling into the area, can seem awfully tempting. But if this area loses its ability to produce pure water because of the industrial degradation of drilling, pollution from excessive traffic or deforestation by rampant development, people in future decades may look back on us with bafflement, wondering why it was that people who controlled such an abundance of riches were willing to sell them off for a mess of pottage.

Dr. Punnybone

Daddy Long Legs